


The Dreamer Dreams

by ShadowsOffense



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsOffense/pseuds/ShadowsOffense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt "Hawke is not real"</p>
<p>Quote/summery provided by an LJ reviewer referencing Cole's spirit of despair:<br/><i>He called without knowing he called, it came, but came with consequences.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dreamer Dreams

Varric wasn’t sure if he had met Hawke before he started writing about her. There were flashes, a glimpse of a figure in a crowd, capturing his eye for a moment. As if everyone else was colorless and she was vibrant brown and red and silver and black and blue. Electric blue, robin’s egg blue, the crystalline blue of the Colean Sea... by the Stone, he could write sonnets about those glowing blue eyes and the knowing look in them as she met his gaze, just for that moment, that instant, before disappearing again into Kirkwall’s crowds as if she had never been. He didn’t need to be told it was Hawke, he just knew. Knew it was her the moment he saw her. Just as she knew him.

And then there were the rumors about her, a refugee, a Kirkwall noble helping this person here, that person there. Everybody talked about her, but nobody had anything bad to say. Even Isabela, who swore up and down Hawke had watched her ass in a duel and saved it too. Showing up just when Isabela had thought she’d have to fight alone and only staying long enough to counter an ambush before vanishing again. 

Varric put many of these rumors into his stories, but they didn’t make up the bulk of her tale, Hawke’s tale, her legend. Varric had been there with Hawke for most of her adventures, he had to have been, to know what he knew. The tales that didn’t reach his ears as rumors. He must have been present for them. Was present for them. How else could he know?

He _knew_ her.

And she was there, really there, with him in the Deep Roads. When Varric’s own brother had betrayed him and left him to die... alone to die... she had been with him. She had found the way out. Hawke. Not him. Hawke had found their way back to the surface. Through impossible, fantastic things, she had been with him, guiding him, fighting at his side.

Just like she was there, suddenly, amid a storm of arrows when the Arishok turned on Kirkwall. She stood, a lone figure, their protector, their champion. For the people. The elves, commoners, nobles, mages, templars, even the followers of the Qun. Because Isabela, selfish Isabela, gave up the tomb. For Hawke.

It was _always_ about Hawke.

Hawke would disappear for stretches, years. But when you needed her, needed hope, Hawke was there. Kirkwall’s Champion.

....

Anders stood alone in his clinic, more ragged and thread bare then he had been five years ago when he’d first come to Kirkwall. He opened his mouth.

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, CHAMPION. LEAVE THIS PLACE, THEY ARE NOT FOR YOU.

_Is this accusation Just? What have I done, save help people? The Fade is close here, the Barriers thin. I can hear them calling, begging for aid. Would it be Just to ignore them? Just to turn a deaf ear? I have harmed none. **Possessed** none. What right have **you** to address **me** as if **I** were the abomination, Justice?_

THE CIRCLE AND THE TEMPLARS ARE AT EACHOTHERS THROATS. KIRKWALL IS IN CHOAS AND YOU HAVE GUIDED IT THERE.

_Their own doing. I saved Samson. Saved Alain. They called to me, hoped for rescue, just as Cullen hoped for peace. Meredith. Orsino. They have no hope anymore. I can not touch them, can not aid them. Must I be blamed for their actions, Justice?_

DO YOU THINK I DID NOT SENSE THE THING YOU GUIDED OUT OF THE DEEPROADS? THE RED LYRIUM IDOL. YOU HAVE ORCHESTRATED EVENTS HERE.

_I did not bring it to the surface. I did not give it to the Knight-Commander. The Mages and the Templars have been headed for this long before I got involved. They can not go on as they are. You know this. It is not right, it is not just. Both sides hope for better. And you, Justice, you hope for better too._

_We could give them that. I can help. I am no demon, Justice, you know me, know my name. Let us give them all what they want, what you want. Freedom. The freedom they hope for, freedom from the Chantry. For mages and templars alike. No more children ripped from their homes. No more children cut away from the Fade or addicted to lyrium to be little better than slaves. And there can be freedom for you as well, Justice, freedom to return to the Fade, return home. The price is small, a sacrifice of one, to set the world free. Is that not everything you hope for?_

**Author's Note:**

> All dreams and illusions come from the Fade, right? So a mass hallucination, well we've seen those in Dragon Age, and what causes them as well.


End file.
